We are currently organizing a PERQ 2022 that focuses on “queering physics education” through community organizing and looks at physics education through an intersectional lens. We mean a few things when we say the focus will be on “queering.” We are centering intersectional and critical queer theory to break down social constructions and traditional hierarchies that are currently upheld in physics culture. In the context of physics education, we want to apply the theory to unpack who has power in physics to control the production of future physicists, how physics policies and practices are sometimes built on ideas of punishment and power, and how PER embeds binaries in both its content and sociological research. Further, we want to encourage a dialogue that is both a critique and an imagining of a queer future for PER. Explicit attention will be given to constructions of race, (dis)ability, gender, sexuality and how they interact with and impact lived experiences.

As queer and queer allied early career physicists, educators, activists, and researchers, we are excited to imagine a radically progressive future for PER. We have a vision that the PERQ 2022 will be an inherently queer conference before, during, and after the conference dates. One of the first steps toward this queer future is putting our central critical theories into practice via distributing the power of conference organizing with community members and emphasizing organizer transparency. We aim to make it easy for anyone in the PER community to be involved in conference ideation and planning, to whatever degree that they would like. We are encouraging non-traditional plenary styles, ways to engage in knowledge sharing, and a bunch of different ways to engage in PERQ organization.
We hope that this theme will highlight existing research and conversations to support an ongoing critical dialogue in the broader physics education research community.

To reflect these values, we've made this survey to invite involvement in the organizing process. For other ways to be involved or provide input check out: https://linktr.ee/perq2022.